Tut's Mask - Left Cheek

Here I have now worked on the left cheek. You can see the stipes of the nemes-headdress reflected.

Tut's Mask - Left eye

I only had time to paint the left eye today, so I did that. It is so eerie to notice the eye in the mask has this reddish tone in the eyeball, just like in real life. I felt like Tut was looking at me with real human eyes...

Attached is also a pic of the brushes I have used in painting this.

Tut's Mask - Nose, Mouth and Chin

And this is what I had time to paint today. The nose, mouth and chin - and the area under the eyebrow of the left eye.

Tutankhamon's Golden Mask - Right Eye and Eyebrows

Today I worked on the right eye and the eyebrows. The brows and the "eye liner" are made of pieces of lapis lazuli, carefully fitted together so at a glance they look like one piece in real life. I wanted to bring out this puzzle effect.

I use a miniature brush and was wondering why it did not give color well. I finally checked the brush and noticed it had only one hair left! And I must have painted with that for at least half an hour LOL :D

Tutankhamon's Golden Mask - right cheek and forehead

I painted this much today. The right cheek is in bright light and this makes is almost colorless. It does have some yellowish hues but the photo does not bring those out. (Could not use flashlight on wet oil paint, the glare would have been too strong)

The left cheek will have much stronger yellow color and strong shadows. The surface of the mask has these very thin "scratch-marks" (for the lack of a better word) and I tried to show those also.

Tutankhamon's Golden Mask - the Cobra

Yesterday I painted the cobra (well, the tail is yet to be painted). It is 7,5 cm or 3 inches high and took me three hours. My miniature brush which had about three hairs when I bought it now seems to be down to two... Maybe it is time to buy a new one LOL :D. The detail photo is slightly blurry but I hope it shows some of the level of detail necessary for this painting.

Tut's Mask - Headdress

I painted this far today - it is summer and so hot my tiny study is like a sauna. I had planned on painting the cobra on the headdress today, but it was way too hot to continue.

 And a little detail...

Tut's Mask - Vulture on Headdress

Here is the first part painted: the vulture in Tutankhamon's headdress.

And a little closeup:

Tut's Mask - preliminary drawing

I am painting usually two paintings at the same time and once I had the horse portrait finished I was doing (check the links to my horse art blog) I started with Tut's Golden Mask.

Here is the preliminary drawing. I pre-stained the canvas and did this with yellow color pencil. Tomorrow I'll start with color. This will be traditional oils on very fine linen canvas.